Quizzes & Puzzles0 min ago
Comedy characters trapped.
22 Answers
Watching the Steptoe & Son film a few nights ago reminded me how often our best commedy characters are those who are trapped in their situatrions.
Hancock, Fawlty, Meldrew, Brent, all kicking against the system, and making comdy that is a mere whisker away from tragedy.
That situation was always so wonderfully realised in the relationship with Harold and Albert - manacled together, each needing the other more than either would ever dare to admit to each other, much less to themselves.
The faces Wlfred Bramble could manufacture, rendering Albert a nasty selfish old man, and in the wink of an eye a pitifully frightened lost soul, were Brechtian in scale and execution, and their black and white TV episodes, often shot on one camera with no edits, were masterclasses in comedy theatre.
Why oh why cannot modern writers create such gems, or find actors with the genuine thatrical skills to bring them to life?
Hancock, Fawlty, Meldrew, Brent, all kicking against the system, and making comdy that is a mere whisker away from tragedy.
That situation was always so wonderfully realised in the relationship with Harold and Albert - manacled together, each needing the other more than either would ever dare to admit to each other, much less to themselves.
The faces Wlfred Bramble could manufacture, rendering Albert a nasty selfish old man, and in the wink of an eye a pitifully frightened lost soul, were Brechtian in scale and execution, and their black and white TV episodes, often shot on one camera with no edits, were masterclasses in comedy theatre.
Why oh why cannot modern writers create such gems, or find actors with the genuine thatrical skills to bring them to life?
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em10 - I disagree - I don't think political correctness has anything at all to do with the strength of comedy from the past. They were of their time, but with The Office, Gervais and Merchant managed to conjure plenty of comedy mileage from their PC constraints - including race and disability - using them to further comedic impact, rather than dancing around sensitive issues.
microg - the, shall we say, 'broader' strokes of 70's comedy evindenced in Love Thy Neighbour would not sit well today, because times have moved on considerably, as has the subtlety of viewing tastes and expectations. Two middle-aged men trading crude insults would not necessarily offend the majority of viewers, so much as be seen to be seriously dated, and viewed for what the series was, a one-trick pony repeated an nauseum week after week like some dreadful Sysiphean nightmare.
And finally, Sorry was irredeemably dreadful - as funny as dysentery on a coach holiday!
microg - the, shall we say, 'broader' strokes of 70's comedy evindenced in Love Thy Neighbour would not sit well today, because times have moved on considerably, as has the subtlety of viewing tastes and expectations. Two middle-aged men trading crude insults would not necessarily offend the majority of viewers, so much as be seen to be seriously dated, and viewed for what the series was, a one-trick pony repeated an nauseum week after week like some dreadful Sysiphean nightmare.
And finally, Sorry was irredeemably dreadful - as funny as dysentery on a coach holiday!
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